The Night Parade(2)

“Dad,” she said from the backseat. There was no pleading quality to her voice, no whining about it. She simply said it and let it hang in the air between them, as if to remind him that she was still there, and to remind him of who he was.

“I know. Gimme a sec, hon.”

He noticed that, according to the gas gauge, the tank was nearly three-quarters empty. How had he not noticed this before? It was careless. But it made up his mind for him.

When they passed a sign that read REST STOP 1 MILE, David said, “We’ll stop there. I’ll park and get the food out of the trunk. You stay in the car.”

“I gotta go pee,” she said.

“Yeah, okay.”

He glanced down and noticed a stringy dark smear on his left shirtsleeve. Even in the dark he recognized it as blood. He absently cuffed the sleeve past the elbow.

Jesus, he thought.





2


When they came upon the lights of the rest stop, David took the exit. His nerves vibrated; his hands shook. It wasn’t a busy rest stop, probably due to the ungodly hour, with only a few scattered cars in the parking lot. Eighteen-wheelers were parked at the far end of the tarmac, their lights off, as motionless as great slumbering beasts. He and Ellie could get lost here, stay anonymous.

David parked the car but left the engine running. He popped the trunk with a button on the dash, then turned around to face Ellie in the backseat.

She was only a week shy of her ninth birthday, but at that moment, tucked into a darkened corner of the Oldsmobile’s backseat, her knees pulled up to her chest, her eyes large and frightened, her clothes rumpled, she looked to David like the small child she’d once been. Helpless, with a face full of wonder and fear. The first few weeks after her birth, he’d paced the floorboards of the house in Arnold cradling her in his arms. She never slept, only stared at him with those wide, intelligent eyes, so wise and thoughtful for a thing that had been alive for such a brief time. Often, she would furrow her brow in some mimicry of contemplation, those murky seawater eyes focusing in on him like camera lenses, and David would wonder what thoughts could possibly be passing through her beautiful infant brain.

He shook the thought from his mind.

“Stay here,” he told her. Then he got out of the car.

It was early September and the air was cool. He could smell gasoline and could hear the buzzing cadence of insects in the surrounding trees. A group of kids in their late teens stood huddled around a nearby trash can, smoking cigarettes and talking loudly. They had plastic dime-store Halloween masks propped on their heads, a trend that had become increasingly popular since the first reports of the outbreak. They shifted their gaze over to David and, somewhat distrustfully, pulled the masks down over their faces.

In the trunk, David popped open the plastic pink suitcase and dug through some clothes until he retrieved a handful of Nature Valley granola bars. There were a few warm cans of Coke in the suitcase, as well—the only thing he’d been able to get his hands on at the time—and so he grabbed one of those, too.

When he shut the trunk, he was startled to find Ellie standing beside the car’s rear bumper. She was watching the smoking teenagers in the cheap Halloween masks, her hands limp at her sides. Her hair, sleek auburn strands that had been a carroty red when she was just a toddler, billowed gently in the breeze.

“Hey.” He reached out and grabbed her shoulder. Firmly. “What’d I say? Stay in the car until I came and got you, remember?”

She turned and looked up at him. Her face was pale, her mouth drawn and nearly lipless. A spray of light brown freckles peppered the saddle of her nose. There was some strange determination in her eyes, and David suddenly felt weakened in the presence of her. It wasn’t the first time she had made him feel this way.

David took a breath and caressed the side of her face with his knuckles. “Go back in the car, Little Spoon,” he told her.

“But I gotta go to the bathroom, remember?”

No, he hadn’t remembered. His brain felt like a rusted hamster wheel clacking around in his skull. He glanced around until he saw a brick outhouse with the word WOMEN on one door, MEN on the other.

“Okay,” he said, and went back around to the driver’s side of the Oldsmobile. He tossed the granola bars and the Coke on the seat, then pulled the key from the ignition. The Oldsmobile shuddered and died. Abruptly, he wondered what he would do if the car wouldn’t start again. Steal another car? Would he even know how to do it? People in movies always seemed to know how to hot-wire a car—it was like tying your shoes, apparently—but he had no clue.

He placed a hand against the small of Ellie’s back and ushered her forward. “Go on,” he told her. “Be quick. And don’t talk to anyone. I’ll wait right out here for you.”

He thought he heard her sob, so he stopped her, crouched down, and looked her in the eyes. They were glassy, but she still wasn’t crying. She didn’t even look all that frightened. In fact, it looked like she was studying him. Scrutinizing him.

“Don’t cry, hon,” he told her anyway. It sounded like the right thing to say, and it was certainly important. “Okay?”

“I don’t understand this,” she told him.

“Little Spoon,” he said, squeezing her shoulder more tightly. He didn’t want attention drawn to them, and an eight-year-old girl becoming upset in the parking lot of a rest stop at this hour would surely do the trick.